


Tourists and xenosexuals

by ineptshieldmaid



Category: Star Trek XI
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, Character of Color, Cultural Differences, Gen, alien character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-18
Updated: 2010-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaila and Uhura, early in their friendship, discussing the quirks of twenty-third century sexuality. Not so much a narrative as meta in character, or what my brain spits out when it ought to be studying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tourists and xenosexuals

Nyota Uhura had always counted herself as both open-minded and well-informed, but it was not until she met Gaila that she first encountered the _xenosexual_.

Or rather, heard of them. Her roommate - green-skinned and glowing, but in a somewhat petulant mood - flung herself into their shared room, muttering something in Orion. Nyota cocked her head - she'd been picking up Orion in the last few months, but having never studied it formally, there were times when Gaila's monologues sailed right past her.

Gaila flung her uniform at the laundry chute and flopped onto her bed. ' _Fucking xenosexuals_ ,' she said, by way of clarification.

Uhura blinked. 'Fucking whom?'

'You know,' Gaila waved a hand. 'Xenosexuals. Some days, they're worse than the tourists.'

Tourists, tourists Nyota knew about. _Tourists_ were the bane and delight of Gaila's life - average Terran guys (and a few girls) who would jump at the chance to sleep with an alien - the more exotic, the better, although, for the most part, tourists preferred their partners humanoid. The key thing about tourists was that it was always casual: an experimental fuck here, an adventurous lay there, and onwards to settle down with a nice human partner. Nyota already knew about Gaila's mixed feelings on the matter of _tourists_ \- on the one hand, all the advantages of a varied sex life, and on the other, the persistent knowledge that you were a destination on someone's sexual itinerary. _Xenosexuals_ , though, this was a new complaint.

'People who are... attracted to aliens?' Nyota hazarded. She swiveled on her chair so that she could run her fingers through Gaila's hair as she lay on the bed. Gaila wriggled a little, into the touch, and Nyota smiled: she wasn't normally the affectionate type, but she had to admit, it was nice, knowing it was this easy to make someone happy, no strings attached.

' _Exclusively_ ,' Gaila grumbled. 'And she thought I'd be impressed,' she added. 'Or grateful. As if she's somehow _better_ than everyone else who wants to fuck me, just because she doesn't want to fuck her own race anymore.'

'Is it - I hadn't heard of them before. Xenosexuals. Are they common?' She frowned, thinking _I ought to have known_. This was her thing, after all. Interspecies relations, with all its quirks.

Gaila shrugged. 'Not much, no. But they find you, if you're... well, alien.'

'I wonder how...' Nyota trailed off. How did one come to be attracted to (potentially) all other races but one's own?

'Beats me,' Gaila said, and smirked up at her. 'Not sleeping with one's own race... about as silly as not sleeping with one's own gender.'

Nyota poked her tongue out. Gaila knew as well as she did that single-gender sexual preferences seemed to run in species with dominant binary gender systems. Humans less so that some other Federation races - at last estimate, a mere five percent of Vulcans were said to be bisexual, compared to fifteen percent of Betazoids and up to fifty percent of humans. Gaila, of course, found the remaining fifty percent of humans to be patently ridiculous, and never missed an opportunity to point this out.

'What have we here?' Suddenly energised again, Gaila snagged the PADD from Nyota's hands. 'Another stimulating evening with Romulan verb tables?'

Nyota swatted her gently around the ear. 'No, this is _fun_.'

'Fun.' Gaila crinkled her nose. 'In High Vulcan?'

'Sure,' Nyota said. 'The history of censorship and obscenity law on pre-Federation Vulcan. With... exemplary texts.'

Gaila stared at her for a moment, and at the screen in her hands. 'The girl hasn't so much as touched another woman,' she informed the waste paper basket, 'and yet, in her free time, she reads Vulcan porn!'

'It's research,' Nyota said primly. Gaila ignored her, scrolling through the PADD for pictures.


End file.
